Friday, April 20, 2007

New Poll

Conservatives retain a solid 10-point lead nationally over the rival Liberals but continue to fall short of the numbers needed to form a majority government.

The survey said support for the Tories was up three points to 39%, while support for the Liberals dropped three points to 29%.

The NDP climbed two points to 16%, the Bloc Québécois edged up to 9% from eight and the Green party slipped to 7% from eight.

By region:

the Quebec picture is a bright spot for the Conservatives. The survey said the party continues to run second to the Bloc, and well ahead of the third-place Liberals.Bloc support stood at 34%, the Conservatives at 28%, and the Liberals were at 20%. The NDP and Greens stood at 13 and 4% respectively

In Ontario, the Conservatives were up five to 42%, the Liberals were down five to 35%, the NDP was up one point to 13% and the Green party held at 10%.

In British Columbia, the Liberals stood at 34%, while the Tories trailed at 30%, dropping nine points. The NDP garnered 27% and Greens had 7%.

In neighbouring Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the Tories surged nine percentage points to 48%, while the Grits dropped eight percentage points to 21% — one point higher than the NDP. The Greens were at 8%.

A total of 46% of Atlantic Canadians favoured the Liberals, while Tory support came in at 28%. The NDP stood at 24%, while the Greens had 1%.

I don't really understand what could have happened in three weeks, since the last Ipsos poll to justify a 9% Tory surge in the Prairies, or for that matter a 9% drop in British Columbia. The last Ipsos poll showed similar wild regional fluctuations, it might be time for a bigger sample size, or don't bother releasing the internals. I'm not putting much faith in these regional numbers.

Having said that, it is surprising that the National Post has the headline "Voters still nowhere near giving Harper his majority", because normally anything that comes close to 40% is hailed as big momentum. I wonder if the Conservative polling shows an uptick as well, given today's strange stall on fixed election dates.

It is noteworthy, the NDP is up in this poll, while the Liberals and Greens fade. This is the first post-Dion/May poll, given the harsh initial coverage, this result isn't particularly shocking.

27 comments:

The Ipsos Poll has been the harshest to the Liberals. Given that the SES and the Decima Poll had only narrow leads within the MOE a couple of days to a few days ago.. I'm skeptical for now of this one till we see others. (And i dont mean the online Angus-Reid poll either).

Anyhow.. with a May 22 election in Manitoba.. I've my doubts you'll see any election before then.

Also of note.. Harper's "fixed election" dates were only in the case of a majority government situation, I believe. It never said in a minority situation that the government had to wait 4 years before calling an election... or that the opposition couldnt cause the government to fall on a no-confidence motion.. so I dont think I'd be looking too hard at that as some suspicious occurrence.

Jeebus wepput, you'd think with the way polls get covered that all these different pollsters asked precisely the same questions of precisely the same people each time.

I have news - in a properly conducted poll - it's a different bunch of out of touch, stay at home, lonely people every single time.

With an even bigger percentage of "refuse to answer", "fax line only", "no one has the next birthday" and "this is a cel line" each time.

It's not representative of anyone other than the lonely, the housebound elderly (who mostly claim non-existent stores like Eatons as their shopping destination of choice but are still counted as informed regarding politics), the ill and the mad.

With few exceptions that's the population sample that supplies most of the reponses in telephone surveys today. Everybody else is averaged up from samples too small to be meaningful.

Sometimes it ends up working out OK and sometimes it doesn't but the overall sampling is almost never demographically complete.

The whole telephone survey industry is approaching snake oil marketing in its disingenuousness.

Before I turned my computer off yesterday I thought to myself...funny Darrell Bricker should have come out with one of his crazy polls before the weekend to make everyone think the harperites are loved by everyone...sure enough Mike Duffy informed us in one of his sneaky snarks that the cons were WAY AHEAD....believe it or not.

Boy, Dana is very harsh here. I'm at home, not lonely, and keep in touch reading the papers and blogs daily.

This is a rather nasty view I'd say. In fact, most seniors (I am not quite there yet) pay more attention to politics than anyone.

They do however, tend to vote Conservative because of their "religious way back when views". This is changing because the seniors coming up now are the babyboomers who's teen years were the 60's and 70's and they are by no means like the old standard seniors.

I hate descrimination again the elderly - they are fabulous people with a knowledge you can't get until you've lived life that long.

Let's see who might be at home and answering their phones: people who now work a flexible work week or work out of home offices, people working part time jobs as they are not fully employed, and so on. Dana I do most of my work out of my home office, as a private practioner. And the last time I checked, I am not old, lonely, or religous.

Have any of you been called by any of the national pollsters lately? Did you consent to do the interview? Odds are you haven't. Out of the millions of Canadians this poll cites a base of 846. Tiny base. Regionally meaningless and nationally insignificant numerically.

I'm not denigrating seniors by stating that seniors are by far and away the most likely demographic to be not only at home and on a land line but also willing to talk to someone. Often eager to talk to someone - anyone. It's saddening sometimes how happy they are to get a phone call from someone who wants to know their opinion. Some are very well informed but...

...you would be truly amazed at how many cite stores or political parties and leaders that are no longer existant. Truly.

I am a senior now a stay at home..I have a phone which I do not use and do not want to use except for emergency and for my dialup connection......I turn on my computer every morning around 7 and keep it on while I watch vision tv.morning mass from St,Mikes' so I am religious and not a con...I read many blogs like far and wide and once in a while..make a comment. I think Darrel Bricker and John wright at Ipsos reid and the Gregg guy at Strategic Counsel are fudging the numbers..yes I am very old but I am not stupid. Dana knows nothing about those of us who no longer can get around so good.

Whooee! Interestin' side track on the codger angle -- at least interestin' to this soon-to-be-senior boomer (b. 1949).

I have to agree with some of what dana says. Seniors are often home to answer the phone and are possibly more willing than others to participate in a poll. But not neccessarily. I have been phoned and participated in phone polls from legit pollsters. Ma (my wifemate) is on Ipsos's web survey panel an' gets asked to do a survey about every 10 days, or so.

I ain't sure about the assumption that seniors is a lot more conservative than the genpop. There's a lot o' young cons an' Cons.

There's also a lotta young folks who may be more pergressive but are also more likely to stay away from the ballot box. Skewing towards seniors is also skewing toward election results reality as opposed to public opinion reality.

An' the boomer angle is pertinent. Senior boomers may well turn out to be less conservative than middle-aged Gen Xers.

I reckon polls do indicate broad trends an' most polls lately showin' the HarpoonTossers gainin' is probbly correct. Instead o' debatin' the accuracy of this or that particular poll, the anti-Harper forces oughta be busy turnin' the tide.

I don't trust Ispos polls at all, Decima usually evens up with SES right after an SES poll is released and then seems to tail upwards until SES comes out with the real poll #'s and then everyone evens back out to SES. Doesn't anyone else see this pattern?

If indeed polls are taken in a manner that the outcome is predicted, I cannot figure out the point. Showing the con's on the up-tick, strengthens the resolve of the Lib's and the left. The parties are of course doing their own polling, so they would not be likely to react to these polls in any dramatic way.

I guess I just don't see how having a daily poll is helping anyone, except creating angst in some.

To be honest, after seeing that poll reflecting how cdn's feel about an elected Senate, made me doubt all polls, meaning either the questions asked influenced the answer or the respondents really had no idea what they were talking about.

Woman at Mile 0.....yes I have noticed that Decima first puts out a high con poll and then when ses comes out..it backs down and says they dropped....Pollers are mostly cons and always put the cons ahead as I have read that it makes the electorate follow their lead. Ipsos has always been a lousy poll....lets face it...cons are cheats.

Back on April 17 when everyone was crowing about the Liberal resurgence I said that those were sleeper numbers because the house was not sitting. I then went on to say that once the house resumed the Cons would move back to being close to 40% and the Libs would drop to near 25% while the rest would be under 15%. Hate to think what would happen to the Libs in an election with Dion on stage everyday.

Joe - Dion will do just fine. He does very well on his own. The problem in the HofC debates is that Harper and Co do not like answering the questions, so they just use the opportunity to take a swipe at the liberals. Most of what they say is irrelevant and often simply untrue.

I wonder how Harper is going to manage the debates - when he is actually going to have to ANSWER the questions, and do so without 100 or so people standing behind him clapping and cheering every word.

Gayle hate to break it to you but Dion can not speak English. He has consistantly given the lead to Iggy in the HOC because of Iggy's fluency in English. Dion sounds like an old room mate of mine who just came off the farm in rural Quebec. He used a French/English dictionary and used French grammar. I wasn't any better in French as I was off the farm in Alberta. We had a lot of fun together even though we couldn't speak to each other.

joe, if you cannot, (note spelling), understand Dion, that is because you do not want to. Do you understand your Minister Bernier? He not only speaks through a thick accent, he has an exceptionally limited vocabulary in English. He apparently is interested in Harp's job if things don't turn out well next election. What will you say then?

knb Dion speaks far better English than I do French I grant you and I must admit that I have not heard Bernier speak so I have to take your word on his linguistic abilities. However he is not leader of any party and does not have to engage in English only debates. My point with Dion is not meant to be anti-French any more than my stating during Preston Manning's leadership that he was not going to be Prime Minister because of his poor French. I recorded a tape of Dion speaking and played it (without offering any opinion) for a few non political people I know. After a couple "what did he just say" comments several walked away and the rest asked me to shut it off because they couldn't understand him.